BUILT FOR LOVE - The BOOK and BLOG

Stopping maybe needed, but starting is essential.

2011-08-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

Stopping maybe needed, but starting is essential.

Not only is most everything we eat, drink and breath today seem to be more and more unhealthy or bad for us, we have been inundated with messages to,"stop, decrease and avoid". Lucky for most of us, it takes years and years of practice, damage, bad habits, stress and negative thinking for our amazing body to be broken down, which means that the majority of the time a person's health and happiness is not decided by just one exposure to any one thing.

We also seem to forget the other side of the equation. For instance how many "healthy points", how much "good" or "benefit" do we gain or get back from a; great sleep, being in love, laughing, being grateful, having friends or adopting and choosing happiness. It turns out more that we ever thought, long term health and happiness is more about, "starting something than stopping", it more about "letting in love", as opposed to "letting go of pain".

This relatively new concept of "adding, allowing, accepting, letting in love or happiness may seem like a strange twist, but its this approach that creates a positive effect in every aspect of our life, health, relationship, careers and even the world around us. This outlook evolves and creates different products, services and companies that improve and benefit us directly and the world around us.

In the past research and medicine was so focused on human suffering, misery , symptoms and disease. It looked at what made us sick, or what was wrong with us, this huge paradigm shift now studies "human happiness". The bottom line is that we all have more power than we think to create and maintain health and happiness, and a more loving world, it all starts by"creating and adding" healthier behaviors and choices.

Feelings and Emotions

2011-08-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

What exactly are these strange sensations we call emotions and feelings? What purpose do they serve, and why won’t they leave me alone? It’s ironic that in an era where we have gone to the moon, harnessed and controlled the resources of the earth, and mastered the art of communicating with anyone on the planet within seconds, that we are still confused by these powerful sensations.

The words ‘emotions’ and ‘feelings’ are commonly used interchangeably, but they are, in fact, very different. For the purpose of this book, let’s define a feeling as the most honest and immediate expression or response to what you are experiencing in the moment. We will define emotion later.

Remember when you were a child? You felt excitement, happiness, or sadness directly and openly. You didn’t hide or try to lie about what you were feeling. When you felt sad, you simply showed sadness; when you were happy, you openly expressed happiness. Feelings can be said to be the language of the heart and your direct connection to the truth at the time.

Virtually every one of you were taught at an early age that is was inappropriate, weak or wrong, to show your true and immediate feelings. The adults around you probably responded: “Calm down”, “Behave yourself”, “Stop making such a fuss”, “Children are better not seen or heard”, “Suck it up”. Again and again, both at home and at school, you were told that you should feel. “What are you crying for?” "Stop you’re crying", “I’ll give you something to cry about!” Over and over, you were given the message that “feeling” was not acceptable. Eventually you lost the ability to trust your inner voice, you doubted the information that your heart was giving you. Eventually you were left with trusting your mind and its version of be quiet to survive.

What was even worse, you interpreted the adult disapproval not simply as an indication that your behavior was inappropriate, but that you yourself were. You said to yourself some variation of “I am not acceptable,” “I am not good enough,” or “I am not lovable.”, I don’t deserve love when I am hurt, sad, alone or feeling powerless.

To a small child this is shocking news. Your very life depends upon these adults; your very survival on their love. It is understandable then that you modeled what you saw after the behavior of the adults around you and learned to “hold in, suppress” the free expression of your feelings. For example, your father yells at you and accuses you of something that you did not do. You are hurt and frightened, but to show those emotions would show your vulnerability. So instead you lash out with anger, or run inside and shut down even more. What your father sees is not the real you, he does not see your hurt, instead he only sees your self-preservation tactic.

The problem is not matter how many years go by and how good you get ant trying to push down your feelings, you cannot stop them from arising any more than you can stop your breathing. As long as you are alive you will continue to feel. It’s true that we have all met people who appear to not have any feelings; however this does not mean that they do not experience, or do not have, feelings. It simply means they have become very skilled at not showing them.

Instead of listening to the emotions as warning signals and using them to look inward to discover what is going on, you learned the trick of bottling up your feelings. Unfortunately, like a simmering volcano, they will eventually erupt. That is why you will find that everything is going along just fine and then suddenly you blow up inexplicably and scream obscenities at a driver who cuts you off in traffic. Or, you say nothing when your boss reprimands you for some small error, but you lose your temper at your spouse when you get home.

Even more alarming, you become so adept at the game of suppression that over time you become disconnected from your natural feeling responses. This switches off your ability to express your feelings or even know what you are feeling. Sometimes you can’t interpret the emotions of other people. In short, you've become numb. You had a fight with your husband, for example, and you avoid the inner turmoil by watching television while polishing off a tub of ice cream. This is the NUMBZONE it may have once provided a safe place when you were a child but as an adult it is nothing more than a distraction from an action, and a delay from being happy.

Managing your feelings can be a conscious action, such as masking your discomfort about not knowing some apparently vital piece of knowledge during a job interview. It can also be an automatic or subconscious mechanism adopted when you were young in self-preservation. If you were sexually abused by your father as a girl, you may have an automatic distrust of men but may not actually know why you respond with anxiety or fear whenever a man tries to become intimate with you. Sometimes people make a conscious decision that later becomes an automatic reflexive response: all my girlfriends have hurt me therefore all women are hurtful. All men are not trust worthy. The list goes on, the hurt we experience as a child will overlay and carry itself forward into almost every present day experience without a feeling to help.

I call these learned responses, emotions. Your feelings are your direct connection to truth and come from your heart. They are your truest expression of what is happening in that moment. Emotions, on the other hand, are cover-ups of your vulnerable feelings. They are your mind’s protections of the feelings. Your mind creates them because it observes that whenever you are open, you get hurt. Although the mind is trying to protect from you from reliving a hurt, the effect of suppressing feelings results in a variety of symptoms such as stress, chronic disease the inability to every really trust or love.

This is why the first step is to learn how to feel, one of the initial tasks that I ask all my patients to start is called , How am I feeling, for instance every morning asking yourself “how do I feel, “Do I feel good, not good or numb?” These are, in fact, the only two ways you can feel. Just because we have thousands of words for feeling crappy such as angry, irritated, depressed, slighted, sad, jealous, frustrated or guilty, at the end of the day they still feel NOT GOOD.

Input feeling = correct emotion	I feel hurt or sad = I show hurt or sad.
Input feeling = incorrect emotion	I feel hurt or sad = I show anger then sadness (usually alone)
Input feeling = avoidance or no emotion	I feel hurt or sad = I distract and show nothing, then sadness alone

Bottom Line - you sense or feel your feelings, and you show or emote emotions. With a completely open and trusting person there is no separation between these two: they always show exactly what they are feeling. This would be called emotional integrity, you feel what you show and you show what you feel. However when an emotions and feelings are different, a conflict is created, a past hurt is reinforced and a protective reflex is allowed to continue affecting every part of your life.

What’s the point of all this feeling?

At the start these feelings and emotions can seem uncomfortable, but they are here for a purpose. Whenever you feel bad, or not good, you know that you are doing something or acting in some way that is not in-line with what is true. For example, anger is a powerful emotion and as you are shouting at someone you may feel empowered and righteous, later however, you feel drained of energy and remorseful, however anger is like a fire if it is meant to cook food however if out of control it can cook you. Feelings and emotions are powerful and they are meant to guide and help us.

Feelings, quite simply, are the way that your heart speaks to you. As you begin to be aware of your feelings or emotional state, you will be able to decipher if it is your heart or your mind that is speaking. This gives you the opportunity to successfully choose the right tool for the right situation. Your feelings are there to tell you how close or how far away you are from our true voice (which as we described earlier is a term for “everything that has ever existed, that ever will exist, that you and everyone else is connected to and that connects all of us to everything”).

When you are closer to the force that connects all of us, you feel good; when you are further away, you feel not so good also known as "feeling bad". Feelings, such as sadness, may not feel good at the time, but if when allowed to be expressed wake you up to your “wanting” and “hunger” to be connected. In other words even if the feeling is uncomfortable, when used by you with your own free will it can be the beginning of new levels of love, this act alone is the start, of "letting in love", healing your past hurts and being fully vibrantly alive.

Your mind, your friend, your power

2011-07-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

You are NOT your mind
Even though you and your mind share the same space, you....are not your mind. The two are very different, there is YOU, the person that wants to love and be loved and there is your MIND, which is like a computer that holds information, plays it back and protects you to survive.

The minds role

Remember even though you are born with a powerful mind is not more powerful than you. Your minds purpose is to assist you, not control, overprotect or stop you from being happy. You mind has been given to you, to follow you. Your mind is not supposed to be the boss of you or your heart. That setup was only meant to be a temporary arrangement while you were young, it was not supposed to be carried over into our adulthood, and when it does it means we are not aware of these differences between the part the we think with (our mind) and the part we feel with (our heart) and the power of our free will.

You and your mind have to become friends

Just as much as a pilot may know the autopilot exists, the autopilot does not know the pilot exists. You being the pilot and your mind being the autopilot have never really been introduced as friends.....that is, until now. It is true that at the beginning, there is a resistance to the free will action of change; this comes from your mind not knowing what's on the other side. It’s a good thing a mind has you to help it through all of those problems and unknown that seem scary.

Your mind needs you

Remember your mind is not your enemy, it is supposed to be your best friend however it does not even know you exist yet; it’s been created to help you not only in your childhood as the "big protector" but in your adult life as the "co-creator and helper”. The mind is very fast and smart, however it is not as wise as you, it often gets confused between a past hurt and a present moment.

Teaching your mind - free will

So the question is, in times of stress, conflict or anxiety are you going use your free will to teach your mind what you want it to believe so it can assist you, or will you stand back and witness your mind freeze, distract or make you numb? Will you let yourself be taken by your minds reflex of worry, panic and fear without your permission?

As protective and needed as this can be when we are young, when this happens as adults the outcome is disastrous. An undirected mind working with a protective survival reflex will steal away valuable time, health, opportunity, peace and eventually your life.

Now you cannot blame your mind for taking and giving your body the "I am in trouble" message, if you did not bother to speak up and take charge by letting it know that you’re okay in that moment. Your mind being link to your body can be very convincing as it increases your heart rate, your breathing, makes your hands start to sweat and your stomach ache. All these are signs that your mind is thinking “danger danger”, all of these sign also signal a time for you to act. You are not a witness to your mind, you are its leader and it needs you.

Leading and using your mind – the action of free will

The only thing to do is an action, first you have to decide, you have to talk and tell your mind what's really happening.......are you really in danger or has your mind got it wrong? Is the past going to recreate itself or is the present going to be different? If you do not communicate with your mind and merely witness it, your wonderful well-meaning pal the mind, can only replay and overlay all of your past hurts and experiences onto each present moment. If not redirected by you it will shut you down; distract and avoid. This is all out of the survival reflex that attempts to protect you from any past hurts from happening again.

In order to take control, your mind needs you to introduce yourself; your mind needs you to lead and give it new and accurate information. Your mind looks to you for guidance, your mind looks to you for support, nurturing, patience and compassion. Your mind also needs you to learn how to trust without proof (minds tend not to trust very well), this by the way is called faith. Your mind needs you to create peace from the panic of the unknown, to find order in chaos, to create movement in fear and to know the difference between what is real and what is not.

Your mind is your friend

You and your mind have to become friends. You are going to be together for a long time, so the sooner the better. This introduction can be as simple as saying, “Mind, it’s okay, we are okay in this moment. Now go and find me some more positive thoughts to play with”. To reprogram the mind, you must know first understand awareness, (the differences and the roles of the mind and the heart), and accept the power of your free will. There are many ways we choose in this life. Inevitably, however, we are primed to use our free will at the beginning by being pushed into it by suffering. Later, with practice, we choose before we have to suffer.

This all starts with the first action of "free will"

So your first action of free will can be immediate, it can be used to accept that you are not your mind, the next is to be able to see your mind as an important part an amazing gift that once aimed and directed by you can be used to attract unlimited opportunities and experiences of love, peace and happiness....‪......when you talk your mind is programmed to listen, it must follow you, you are actually linked to its survival.

You decide your identity

2011-07-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

You decide your identity

Unless one has consciously created or built a certain identity or character type, these traits are not the real person, in fact many times they are the direct opposite of the person. For example, she is so sweet but when she gets triggered she gets so angry, he is so nice but when he drinks he becomes abusive. Which one is real, usually the real person is trapped in the protective identities and reflexes (shutting down, anger). Learning and evolving your identity does not change the core of the person, it merely removes the pieces that are not them.

This can be the first day of your new life, or another day of the life you have always had. You have the power to decide what parts of you, you like and what personalities or identities you want to change. it may sound too good to be true, but every quality, behavior or personality can be modified and updated as needed by you.

The Stagnant to Dynamic

Identities, personalities and the person are meant to be dynamic, you have the power to update, adapt and use multiple pieces of identities several times a day, they are all meant to be modifiable. You can mix and match, merge, and adapt them as you wish based on the situation and the experiences you want. Some will act as a foundation for others to build on, and others you will change as the situation dictates. Identities are like clothes or music, do you just wear one color or style every day in every environment or situation, do you listen to just one song over and over or do you listen to multiple songs or all types of music?

The challenge and resistance to be you

Why is it so challenging to break from our core beliefs? Is it due to the strong survival effect our mind has on controlling our taught identity to keep us safe. At the beginning the mind convinces us to stay the same; the mind gives us the false message that the uncomfortable pain of change and the unknown is more dangerous than the current suffering of doing the same familiar and safe reflex. This is known as resistance to change and its mere presence is what actually tells us we are at the door to positve change.

Suffering is felt when you are just revolving in one spot and you need to move, it is the signal to use your free will to choose, move, act and evolve. Resistance to change is felt when you are about to move and it is no more than the mind's perceived safest action to stay in control, but more significant is the meaning behind the sensation of this point of resistance. This marks a point of change, a leap into yourself and signals that you are moving correctly.

You get to create and teach your own mind the internal lines you want to live by, which are very different that the lines the mind sets. Our mind is so focused on protection that it gets stuck on hanging onto the “always staying the same and safe” identity for survival. This causes us to get lost in a time warp of responsibilities and rules with any evolution of the soul being always pushed through by loss time, love or health. This numbzone pattern takes us so far off what makes us happy that we need some kind of intense awakening (heart attack, loss, relationship breakup) to reset us.

The efficient alternative is to just accept our gift of free will and choose. This gift of free will is yours to use, by seeing the contrasts of life instead of judgment. You do not need free will to be in a reflex or to revolve in the same spot.

It is the awakening to this great gift we call life and our power. Inside every one of us is a force that connects us to life, love, happiness and purpose. Choosing to believe in this force allows you to create your own identity, making every day dynamic and creative. You get to inspire others around you without any effort and your health, happiness and life experiences are maximized.

The Balanced Balance Wheel

2011-07-08T00:11:00.000-07:00

The Balanced Balance Wheel - The Happiness Bank

Making the priority list - Many of us have different core beliefs, identities and values that are not truly ours. This means many of us are living with a internal responsibility or group of rules that have not been made by us, in other words we have not consciously out of free will decided them. This creates anxiety, stress and disease. To check your current priority list; from 1 to 8, with number 1 being the most important or valuable to you list each section. For instance is you listed money as number one and romance as number 5, do not be surprised if you create more money than love. The order may need to be changed and re-adjust based on what you currently want in your life.

How much happiness do I have - moving from the center, color or fill in each section with the level of contentment or happiness in each section. For instance if you are happy or content with your job 50%, then fill it in halfway, even if you did not have a job at the time but are content 50% with the work or effort you are putting into finding one, then you would still fill it in halfway.

Filling the Wheel - Once all completed, then stand back and see what areas of your life need to be improved or focused on. Next list or come up with 4-5 ways (goals) of increasing every aspect of the balance wheel.

Core Beliefs, how much is really you?

2010-08-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Core beliefs

Core beliefs include the rules, obligations, principles, and values that govern our behavior. Core beliefs are attached to our survival. They are the rules that give structure to our sense of identity and govern much of our behaviour, with or without our conscious awareness.

This strong attachment is made through our life experiences as a child. In fact, what we typically refer to as the ego is really how a person's mind is taught to express core beliefs.

Core beliefs are the childhood “goodie bag” that everyone gets, some are positive, while others can be detrimental to a person’s overall health and happiness.

This is how why you may have acquired several core beliefs that currently do not serve you. As children, we did not have the tools or freewill to determine which of these beliefs would be helpful to us in our life journey. As a result, we accepted them all.

As an adult, you gain the gift of free will and choice, and it is perfectly okay to question and decide which rules you want to keep and which ones you want to replace or, in some cases, discard completely.

Your Core beliefs may not be yours.

An often overlooked point about core beliefs is that these internal rules that govern how you currently live, love and operate in the world did not come from you. They were your emotional inheritance paid from your childhood training and experiences. For instance, you may have learned that you should feel guilty for taking care of yourself.

Sandra described a belief she had — the "I have to always be doing something, not allowed to rest" program. When Sandra was growing up, her parents taught her that in order to be valuable she always had to be doing something. She was not praised for her ability to just rest or be peaceful. This conditioning established a 45-year program that never allowed her to relax in peace or to feel okay at rest. It also made any accomplishments seem less than spectacular, and since there was no time to peacefully enjoy them, they never seemed good enough. Today, she is able to recognize the little girl within who learned to judge herself negatively and, through the process of letting in love; she has now given herself permission to rest.

For 20 years, Betty hated going to a job where she was belittled, made to feel small, and told she was never good enough.When I asked her why she stayed in the job so long, she said,” Well, I didn’t want to leave the job without being able to find another, and after being in that environment, my self-esteem became so low that I didn’t think I could get another job”. Of course, this belief only reinforced her negative cycle. When I asked where she had learned not to quit, she replied, “My father said, ‘never quit anything’”. We can see how early learned childhood experiences can affect the present.

Standing up for your beliefs

Of course it is okay to stand up for what you believe in, as long as the beliefs you are defending and sometimes willing to sacrifice time and energy for, are, in fact, yours.

All you need do is to add choice, or the ability to choose. It’s your life. You get to decide which beliefs you want—ones that can make you smile when looking at yourself in a mirror. This is efficient, since by choosing beliefs that you want, you may automatically let go of those you unconsciously or unwillingly learned which do not work for you.

In other words, it is okay to stand up for a certain belief as an adult, even if that belief is one that you were taught as a child — as long as, of course, it does not make you miserable. After all, any set of rules that creates more stress or unhappiness most likely is not yours.

It is your life, so your opinions and choices matter; otherwise your life is not based on free will. In other words, it is okay to stand up for a certain belief as an adult, even if that belief is one that you were taught as a child — as long as you have decided it supports you.

How much of you is really you?

Most of us underestimate how much of our day to day personality, identity and what we think we are, was decided without our input. If we take the example of a person that avoids or does not like conflict, we could guess that they may have learned this in their childhood by seeing their parents fight destructively or not seeing their parents fight at all. The end result would likely be an adult with a belief system and identity that is not really of their choosing. They would not know how to express themselves fully in a conflict.

Examining and choosing appropriate core beliefs allows you to live your own genuine path rather than automatically supporting or modeling someone else’s life, rules, and beliefs.

Most of us think "freedom"

How free can you be, if your past hurts and conditioning controls your present day actions, how much of your life is yours and how free can you really be? This truth as painful as it sounds is if your mind is controlling you without your permission than you are very much like a robot. You will be as happy as your mind's rules allow you to.

Most people live and die without ever questioning what and why they believe what they believe. Where did you get your rules of life from and do they in fact serve me now? It is very common for people to say; that's just me, or I am a type A personality, that’s the way I was brought up, I am a control person, or I don't like conflict. No matter what the personality trait we must ask ourselves how much of our identity has been decided by us, how much of what I have been brought up to be is really me? It turns out, not as much as we would like to believe, this may not sound so good at first, but the realization of this fact is the beginning of amazing new levels of power and freedom.

Changing your Core Beliefs

To begin you must have the awareness to know the difference between your mind and your heart, the acceptance that you are more than just reflex and that you are a person of free will.

To start simply begin asking yourself the questions of awareness. Knowing that every action has an intention behind it and knowing that it is either to avoid pain out of reflex or to accept more love out of choice.

We are all connected to a force that guides us to the choices in our lives; this is a working relationship where even though the inspiration and opportunities may come from within you, the choice to accept what to do is uniquely yours, it's your life and your gift.

Whenever you are in a conflicted or uncomfortable situation, ask yourself the following

· Am I doing this to avoid pain or to seek love?

· What do I really want?

· How do I feel, happy or sad?

· Does this personality trait serve me,

· Does it create happiness?

· Is this something that I would choose?

· What would I gain by updating it?

· Do I want to change it?

A powerful visual and awareness exercise is the Balanced Balance Wheel (aka the happiness wheel) contains different aspects of a persons life (relationship, spiritual, health, fun, family, home, career, financial) and then have the person go through each section and ask the questions - what are my beliefs around this, where did I get those, do they serve me, do they create happiness, does if cause me more pain, would I choose that rule, would you teach a child the same? This can help sort out which belief you want to evolve and can start to remove the obstruction that block so many of us from our purpose.

3. The Minds Survival Reflex

2010-08-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

In this context the survival reflex is an automatic protective response contained in everyone that is triggered in childhood by any perceived danger and associated with a core hurt. Another name for this is the ego. Humans along with every living creature that has ever lived have one thing in common, the genetic reflex or protection to survive.

This survival reflex as the name implies is fast, automatic, universal to all living creatures and is there to protect us when we are not able to protect ourselves. This survival reflex is our autopilot and our life preserver. The “life preserver” role is simple, to preserve life, yours. Its mode of action is also simple, move away physically and emotionally as fast as possible from any perceived danger. This reflex is not focused on "winning" or the "best or most loving" action, it is setup to be focused on "not losing" or "not dying", which means it evaluates, compares and in a choice between two separate actions will picks the one that harms you the least.

The survival reflex is strong and begins to form even while in the womb, we know that even during fetal development the mother’s reaction to stress is communicated to fetus through circulating stress hormones. In other words the growing fetus experiences the stresses of the mother. Understanding that the body does not do anything without purpose and the primary purpose being survival the need for this is to prime the baby for the environment that it will be born into. This could help explain why we see children that are more “sensitive” to conflict or stress.

The body and mind have an innate wisdom and intelligence, the smallest actions have purpose. At the start of life that purpose is simple, keep the body alive under any circumstance, protect survival. In the event of continual triggering (lots of hurt) the survival reflex ends up creating even deeper protective behaviors or habits. Example of this is child abuse, sexual abuse. To a child especially this is a massive amount of trauma, sadness, unknown, powerlessness and confusion to process, the fast efficient survival reflex takes over and diverts and shuts down any pain and hurt away from the child. This is great in the moment but if left unchecked in adulthood leads to deeper problems related to feeling safe, self esteem and the ability to trust and love.

This survival reflex is meant to be used for a short time only, and only under extreme emergencies. A reflex without guidance or choice creates a prison of thought and action. A protective reflex is great when you’re a child without any real power, freedom or choice but not so good when you are an adult. For example a reflex to kill is great in war time, but not so good in peace time; a person trained by their environment to be a soldier can be left totally unequipped to be "peaceful in peace" and even innocent actions can be interptrted as threats.

The thriving reflex

Most of us have a well tuned survival reflex but a untuned thriving reflex. The making of a thriving reflex comes from using all of your information from your heart (feelings) and your mind (thinking) and then actively choosing with the gift and power of free will. This process starts and repeats itself as ; first awakening, then creating awarness, followed by action and then feeling more alive.

Awaken
Awarness
Action, acceptance, choice
Alive and more awakened

3. The Evolution of the word EGO, its time to add a little love.

2010-08-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as the ego, at least not how we have come to know it. The term ego was classically used to describe the part of a person that experiences and reacts to the outside world to ensure survival. In other words their minds, experience trained survival reflex. The term ego helped with labelling a person with a mental disease, in the beginning of understanding how and why people behave it was assumed to be important to label the part of us that seem to cause or be related to a person unhappiness, commonly still called a condition or disease. It seemed that this part contained within us had the ability to block or protect us from being happy, open and the best we could be. This was the birth of the term ego. Ego was meant to describe the core beliefs gone wrong, your survival reflex attacking itself, your mind attacking your heart, or the piece that seems to act detrimentally without needing your permission. The ego is the part of us that is programmed for survival set in play by the person experiences.

One of the main problems with ego is the way it is viewed. When you hear the word ego, do you think of a positive, neutral or potential negative quality or part of us? When you use the word "ego" do you take the word in a good context, a positive context, a loving context? Do you see the ego as a beautiful powerful tool here to help us, or this thing that within us that needs to be watched out for? Far too often the ego is thought to be a part of us that controls us instead of an amazing gift that we have at our disposal that we aim and lead. Its unfortunate the word ego and having an ego has become associated to be mostly a negative thing. The term ego has become this scary dark part that we have to protect from, watch out for and even block out. How many times have you heard someone say, hey that person is in his ego and not meant it as a compliment?

Have you been created with a piece of you that is negative?
Most of us have been taught that the ego is something detrimental. Does it really make sense that you would be born with a part of you aimed to hurt you or sabotage you? The main problem with the term ego is the way the word has been used, it implies a judgment. How can we fully love ourselves if we assume some part of us is "bad" or "can hurt us" in some way? Whenever we judge something as good or bad, it makes it almost impossible to love it. If I judge a piece of myself as bad, then I have made it difficult for me to fully love all parts of myself. I am going to be walking on eggshells in my own head, telling myself to be very quiet, the 'egos' sleeping – we don't want to wake it up. I mean how can you really love yourself if you automatically think that a part of you is "bad or negative" in some way.

The problems with concept of the Ego

It attaches a negative association to a part of us
It gives power to the word not the person
Does not give any power of choice to change or teach
It is a label used the same as a disease

The ego is just the mind
I think it's about time we start reassessing the word and the function of this part used to describe a persons behavior. Let's assume for a second there is no such thing as the ego, at least not the way it has come to be known. There is no doubt the existence of a piece of us that has a powerful effect on our behavior but rather than label it attached to a potentially judgmental meaning, lets update the word to see it for what it really is. The ego is the thinking computer like part of us that stores memories, and operates the reflex to survive until you take over and aim it. In other words, the ego is just the mind, not the person. The simple term "mind" instead of ego allows one understand that this is a neutral piece of us, not to be feared but to be understood and taught, the mind works for us.

You are not your mind
You should be beginning to understand that your ego or mind is not you. You are not your mind. Your mind is the fast computer part of you responsible for your survival. The mind is the part that kept you safe and protected until you could take over. Your mind has been so much a part of you for so long that it is common to believe you and the mind are the same.

Your mind works for you.
Does it make more sense that you would be born with parts of you aimed to help or hurt you? Why would we be born with this thing that hurts us that we have to watch out for or shut off? We would not. We all have amazing tools and gifts that first have to be accepted. With the gift of free will, you can choose to believe that every part of us is here to help create happiness. It is your mind (previously termed the ego), it works for you, you don't work for it.

You can decide how to view it and use it.

Is your mind here to hurt you or serve you; is it your enemy or friend? With your free will, choose to see your mind as a gift; with this choice you not only create a powerful friend that has already proved its loyalty, but also a more peace state to create in. Your mind needs you to teach it, your mind needs you to show it wisdom and love, your mind needs a job and a project, make that project your happiness. When you accept that your mind is a powerful friend that needs your help and direction, peace replace conflict.

Training the Mind
Your many names for mind; ego, computer, survival reflex, and trained starting program, that you did not personally program, can be reprogrammed starting with your free will. Remember the mind is operating on a reflex that you did not program. In other words even your core beliefs may not always be yours. How much freedom and power can one really have if any you are controlled by reflex or a program that you did not create? With your gift of free you can update your mind with your new goals, your new beliefs and your new personal program. Conflict for instance, is what you feel when you are in a battle between what your mind is thinking and what you are feeling, these are perfect opportunities to use your free will to choose your heart which automatically shows and teaches your mind. This is your life and your gift, its time you start programming your minds speedy reflex to work where you aim it.

You and your mind have to be introduced
Your mind is your survival reflex that does not even know you even exist. The mind is always doing the best job it can to survive, but it is on autopilot, that is until, you the pilot takes over. Now, just like a pilot may know the autopilot exists, the autopilot doesn't know that the pilot exists. So just because I know that my ego or mind exists, my ego or mind doesn't know I exist. I have to introduce myself. We had to get to know each other; a mind is there for the purpose that I choose. The simplest way introduce your mind to you is through the action of gratitude.

Love your mind
Waiting for your mind to tell you that the coast is clear is not the same as you telling your mind that the coast is clear. You have to commnicate with your mind, your voice is the only one that your mind will listen above all others. We need to spend the time nurturing and teaching our mind through the repeated actions of following our hearts. The mind is built to watch and learn and your heart is built to love. As you continually follow your heart, your mind will learn, adapt and assist in attracting happiness while peacefully moving you through any unknowns.

Those that have come to live in a consistent increasing state of gratitude have a working relationship with their mind, heart and body, they have not separated them or shut them off. With the mind they have trained it, encouraged it and loved it. They have trained and taught the mind to focus on love, peace, joy and gratitude. In other words they have trained the mind to serve the heart. They use their mind as a gift; their mind does not use them.

5. Learning Efficient Happiness

2010-08-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

Efficient Happiness

Is a method of guidance that teaches people how to be happy, it’s a simple concept but one that is missed in almost every person. Happy people tend to be less depressed, how many happy depressed people do you know? Not many, so when someone comes in with a diagnosis of depression, that terminology is quickly re-labeled to “not happy”, this terminolgy gives power back and allows you to take action. It is only after that can we see the person as an open slate ready to learn. Just to clarify, there are many life lessons that teach us to close off emotionally, not to trust, and to overprotect ourselves, all of these are attempts to avoid pain, however avoiding pain is not the same as creating and being happy. Most people have just never been taught how to be happy, have you been taught? When we are growing up, there are no classes that teach us how to use our hurts to create peace, or ask for extra love when we are going through pain, there is no training in emotional and spiritual awareness, there are no classes in how to use our free will and how to feel or how to be in the moment.

There is an Indian Belief that everyone is in a house of four rooms:

A physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual

Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room everyday, even if only to keep it aired, we are not complete.

-Rumer Godden (House of Four Rooms)

Efficient Happiness Training

To begin efficient happiness training you must first understand the gifts and tools that you have been born with. First you have an amazing self-healing body capable of carrying you through all your life, next you have a creative part of you that exists in the present moment that you feel with (heart), then you have a part of you that calculates, plans and thinks (mind) and then you have, “you” (soul or witness), the driver of your life that gets to pick and choose how to work and merge all of these parts together. Most people are unaware of the simplest truths that we have these unique and amazing parts given to help us create an amazing life. In relationship to the mind and heart, many people don't realize that these two are distinctly different. Now it must be stated that I am not dividing these to separate them, but rather to allow a wonderful contrast so one can see how to merge and use them together. This would be the same an artist learning the difference between the canvas of the mind and the paint of the heart. The mind and heart, along with your body and soul are all meant to communicate, be friends and work together. One confusion for people is that they have been brought up to assume there is only thing inside of us that just talks alot, instead of recognizing that there are two distinct and unique voices. The mind for instance has all the characteristics and qualities of a computer, it is fast, stores information, attaches and associates for speed, plans, calculates, and judges threats to assist in your survival and avoid pain. The heart is the opposite it is the creative feeling part of you with all of the characteristics and qualities connected to a sparkly eyed child that has never been hurt and is seeking love in a constistant open state of gratitude. If we used the word god, your heart would be your doorway or connection to god, truth and wisdom.

Are you aware of the these distinct parts of you or do you believe that they were all just one? Do you know the differences between the part that you think with called your mind, and the part that you feel with called your heart? Which is your dominate state, which one is the boss, in other words are you more of a avoid-a-painer or a seek-a-lover? Which one do you believe guides you towards happiness, your head or your heart?

Next, consider accepting these certain simple truths:

That we are all born clean and good, in other words that you are not broken built to suffer
That no part of you has be created with the intention to hurt you or cause you to suffer, every part of you is here to help create happiness.
That force of love is stronger than fear or hate, the world is evolving everyday.
That we are all connected and part of this force.
That life is a gift.
It is okay to be happy
That your heart is your connection to your feelings and what is true for you.
That you are not your mind, you have a mind to serve you.
That your mind looks to you for guidance.
That you are born with free will.

Gaining Happiness
Most people at the start live their lives in a fairly automatic survival mode, waiting for life to start and reacting to every life situation as it comes up. The main growth, learning and change happens through life experience, painful and happy. This living style is what most people do; it is a survival program that does not use the fullest potential of the person’s gifts and tools and free will. The person is bound repeating patterns that were taught to them. This is painfully scenic way of changing and evolving and because the person is not really steering their own life, emotional and spiritual movement is gained more through lost time and suffering. Again this style still works; it is just not very efficient or as fun. A person in this mode can still experience great moments of happiness and still evolve, it is just simply a life filled with more time surviving than thriving, and it is not as purposeful. This person can be happy they are just not as happy as they deserve to be. Its like old technology that needs to be updated.

Practicing Efficient Happiness

Efficient happiness is the understanding, attention and practice of the art of being happy through the use and merging of all your tools and gifts. It is living in a consistently increasing state of gratitude. It is the enlightenment that is attainable by all.

You can practice Efficient Happiness by using your tools and aiming them to any one or combinations of the following;

Emulating others that are happy. If you decide to use this method remember do not take guidance from people more miserable than you. This only shows you what not to do; it does have some value but is quite different than knowing what to do.
Actively involving or inducing yourself into specific circumstances that provoke and trigger you to feel and then choose. This can be a little scary at first, since you are actually using in some cases your fear to move you. This is excellent for triggering up past hurts that can become clean. Hang in there, after the fear and sadness, comes more love, gratitude and peace. This method is best to do in a relationship or with a close person.
Directing, focusing and drawing attention to your mind through imagination on how to react before you are in a situation, in other words giving your mind the most loving answer before it asks what to do. This is very similar to a mantra or positive affirmations with the added benefit of attaching the feeling to the focus, in other words it is a confirmation. It is done the same way a child uses imagination, it has the excitement sensation as they bring the future to them without leaving the present moment. This is very powerful at re-attaching, re-associating and reprogramming your mind to be in the present moment and actually serve you.

5. Learning how to be Selfish from the heart - Self-full

2010-05-28T00:51:00.000-07:00

Most of us have been trained or programmed to think it’s a bad thing to be selfish. Let’s really look at the meaning of the word selfish, in the classic sense “selfish” means to think of yourself and no one else, or worse yet disregard and push away others. It can also be the same as greed or entitlement.

When you hear the word selfish, do you think of person who just thinks of themselves and no one else, or do you think of someone who thinks of themselves along with everyone else? In the truthful sense, everyone is selfish, all actions in any part of the day have some sort of selfish intent. There are actually two types of selfish. There is the type that is motivated by avoiding pain, and there is another type of selfish that is motivated by seeking love. The first one is a reflex of protection and survival and the next is a choice out of thriving. Which one are you most of the time?

Selfish from your mind – Survival and Avoiding Pain

Have you been in situations where you’ve done so much for other people only to be left unappreciated and upset off after? What was your real motivation, were you really doing those actions because you were thinking of them first or did you do those actions not to feel guilty, not to feel like a bad person or not to be rejected in some way. The only way to really know is ask yourself how I would have felt if I did not do those actions, if the answer is bad or guilty you may have been motivated by just trying not to feel guilty. Were you doing those actions because you where trying to avoid pain. This is the classic people pleaser, that goes to the extreme to make everyone happy while simultaneously burning themselves out it the process. My clinic is full of these patients, they are the classic mother and wife that has sacrificed everything for their family, mostly out of obligation and responsibility and once the kids have grown they abruptly come to the realization that they are alone, except now they are alone inside of a burned out, out of shape body, they present with chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, diabetes and heart disease.

For instance, what if I was only being nice to you because I don’t want to get rejected, feel bad or because I needed something from you. You still get the nice act I guess, but I am only really doing it because I have to not because I really want to. I am motivated by not wanting to get hurt, or feel guilt. So I am just thinking of myself, that’s me trying to avoid pain, I’m not really thinking of the other person first or at all, I am motivated solely by my reflex needs to avoid pain, this is the ultimate and more detrimental version of selfish. This is also the version that causes the most amount of lost time, health, potential to the person and the world around them.

In the family setting, the meaning of this word has lost the essence of helping one another, we have made the word selfish automatically imply some responsibility to care for everyone else accept ourselves. Oddly enough if your do not care for everyone else first your told that you are being selfish, when it is actually more the person who is motivated by avoiding pain that is the one being selfish. Now I am not saying we should not help care for those unable to care for themselves, I am merely saying that we must learn to merge them together to ensure that we help and nurture ourselves first, or all we do is end up creating another sick person to take care of.

Imagine a lady with her young daughter on a plane. Imagine and remember the oxygen mask? In the event of an emergency who are you supposed to put the mask on first? You or the child? You always put the mask on yourself first and then the child, that’s because unless you help yourself you can’t help your child. That would be considered selfish in the way we’re taught. It is in fact very self full. It would be very costly for you to die and leave your daughter with the mask on without a mother. It is okay to love and pay yourself first.

Self-full from your heart - Paying yourself first

Selfish from the heart is totally different than selfish from the mind. Selfish from the heart means self-fully always thinking of yourself first. This self-full exists in nature. Think of a growing plant it grows and becomes beautiful, programmed and focused on itself. It exists in balance and harmony with the other “selfishly self-full” plants. It grabs all of the light, oxygen and nutrients, everything that it needs when it needs it without guilt. This plant would simply not grow if it was programmed to believe that it was not worthy. The plant would die if it had to fight inside and debate past guilt every time it needed something to grow. A withering dying plant or person does nothing to inspire others how to grow and does nothing to feed or nurture anyone around it. Everyone loses.

Does it make sense that you have been given your amazing gift of life to make everyone happy except yourself? How happy and healthy could you really be if your time and life is given in this way? How happy could an “unhappy you” make others see the value of life? Could you really be the best you could be if you are the last person valued? Does it not reason that if you are happy and healthy that you would not only have more energy to show love but you would also have more ability to inspire others and you would be purposeful to more people at the same time as yourself. Why does someone always have to loose, becoming selfish from your heart means more people win consistently. What if you could think of yourself and others at the same time and by being selfish and loving yourself first it actually served not only you but others around you. The days of being able to merge the two to create a selfish from the heart that serves yourself and other is what is know as Self-Full and is basically the act of paying yourself first.

Paying yourself first

What do you think it feels like when you do something solely for yourself, do you feel great, or do you feel remorse or guilty? We are taught that it is wrong to think of ourselves and it is better to think of others first. This common program to think of others first (and us last) is the same thing as I am not lovable or valuable enough to love myself first and everyone else is worth more than me. Thinking of yourself may seem like a hard concept to grasp at first but it is the most efficient way to love others, and the world around you. Loving and paying yourself first, leaves no emotional debt for someone else to pay, you are creating, maintaining and inspiring happiness in every action of every day. Loving yourself first also means thinking of your happiness first and in the context of the heart really means “self-full”.

Selfish from the heart or “self-full”, is different, it means that you’re naturally always thinking of yourself in the equation of giving and taking, you automatically treat yourself as a priority, you take care of yourself, you esteem and value yourself, and you know and accept that you are valuable, important and lovable. Selfish from the heart means you’re shining because you’re connected to the light and your goal is to be as beautiful as you can be. I don’t mean primarily aesthetically, I just mean alive, open and beautiful. This type of selfish naturally and automatically adds back to the world, and it does it with the least amount of energy and the most amount of playfulness. It is not a chore to help when you are happy. A self-full person does not add more regret and fear back to the world, they do not add more hate back to the world. A truly selfish person from the heart adds love and gratitude to every day and every person.

If you are “selfishly self-fully” taking care of yourself and becoming happier and healthier every day, how many people do you think you could really help in life? If you are selfish from your mind, the way of helping people is exhausting, and someone will always loose….you. How quickly do you think you would get burned out? It take enormous of energy, time, lost health and potential when everybody else comes first, second and third and you get the scraps left over. This is the difference between a “care giver” and a “giver of care”. It’s efficient, it takes minimal energy to show love or give care when you take care of yourself first. The person running primarily from selfish from their mind will never run out of people or problems to save or think of first, this is also known as a co-dependent relationship. This type of selfish seems okay on the outside but actually limits the persons potential and will always have someone’s else’s problems to distract from your own. It is important to balance yourself, it is important to love yourself first.

Paying yourself first for the world
True selfishness in the not so positive sense really only exists in the mind and is based on the reflex to protect yourself from being hurt. Self full from the heart, the new version of selfish is something you do out of choice and has a positive effect on yourself, and those around you. If you’re going to do something do it because it makes you feel good not because it keeps you from feeling bad. Selfish from the mind avoids pain, selfish or self-full from the heart is done for the primary purpose to seek love, create peace and add more joy and happiness to yourself, your spouse, your family and the world. Whenever you help, love and value yourself first, you automatically ensure that you move positively through the world, while being less of a burden. You become efficient without society needed to take care of you. That means another person doesn’t have to help save you. Another benefit of not being a burden to anybody is that all of your energy is reserved for adding to this world. I believe that the religious context of guilt sometime takes us ways from the spiritual concept of helping others first through helping ourselves and then teaching others how to do the same. It was already assumed that if you have been given this amazing gift of life that you would choose to preserve it and help yourself first. What purpose and good are you really in the long run, and who will help you once you become sick. Help those by teaching them that their life is a gift. Help the world by showing them what joy looks like, in this way you can be purposeful and inspire those around you. There may be some truth to the expression the world helps those that help themselves.

Why is this world always thinking about debt instead of wealth? Why does this world have poverty, why does this world have war and disease? Entertain the possibility that people are taught the wrong version of selfish. Can you imagine if everybody actually took care of themselves? We would help those that are really are unable to help themselves, not the ones that are unable or been “enabled to be emotional disabled” because our survival programs have inadvertently taken their ability to feel, learn and make choices.

What a concept; being nice, loving and open because it feels good to you, can you think of any other reason to be nice, open and loving? This kind of selfish is positive, it is self-full and it rewards and pays you three times; it pays you and the people around you in the present moment, shines light into your past to clean any hurt and allows you to have an effect for your future. Being self-full makes you feel peaceful while allowing those around you to see your light.

Can you list all the advantages to becoming Self-full?

4. Are you stuck in the Numb Zone?

2010-05-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

The NumbZone, is not a destination, thing or idea, it is a far too common state of not being fully alive. The NumbZone is the mind’s protective state; it protects us from feeling and living fully in the present moment. It is the part of our mind’s survival reflex that distracts us from any possible past hurts being recreated. This state exists by moving through life day-by-day without communicating or checking in with your own feelings.

You can even outwardly seem to be very emotional when in fact you’re true feelings are effectively blocked. A person trapped in the NumbZone is unaware that a deep survival reflex is constantly working in the background in a crude attempt to protect you from the reoccurrence of similar past hurts. The Numb Zone is a state of limited freedom and creativity where you are not really unhappy or happy. You may even identify this state as “being happy” or “being content” when in fact it is a state of just “not being miserable”. This NumbZone can become so much a part of your life that you spend your bank of time as though it had no value; months, days and hours pass where you are surviving rather than thriving. You may find yourself marking the days as though there was a severe shortage of love and happiness. Rather than living a life of direction and purpose, you wander through a maze of seemingly never-ending responsibilities, obstacles and diversions. You slave away at jobs that don't fulfill you and struggle with relationships that merely distract you from being alone rather than creating more love.

All in all, you've become increasingly protected, disconnected, stuck and shut down from the most precious thing of all: your very own living life. You have become comfortably numb. You have entered, mastered and become comfortable and safe in the NumbZone.

Feeling the NumbZone

One of the obvious problems with the being stuck in the NumbZone is that you cannot feel yourself in it, hence the word numb. You cannot feel yourself living or moving in either a positive or negative way. Even though you may have a sense of being stuck, out of control, trapped or powerless, you end up merely coping and surviving. You live your life without any significant contrast, and there is not enough energy left to promote change or even bring about awareness of the net in which you are entrapped.

To understand the purpose of a "feeling" for your life when it comes to position and direction, you must invite energy and awareness. Would you agree that if you followed a life of integrity or truth, you would have a higher chance of health, peace and happiness and your feelings would reflect that? Would you also agree that if you did the opposite you would have a higher chance of being unhealthy and unhappy? Feeling is the first part of awakening from the numbness, and you can begin today even if the feeling is only nameable as “numb”.

Awakening from the NumbZone

Never underestimate the power of suffering and adversity or a heart attack to move someone to change. You could spend years in the NumbZone until enough time, pain or suffering has past to push or awaken you from the numbzone. A breaking from the NumbZone is called an awakening and this happens when you have been unable to avoid and distract from your sadness, suffering or ill-health. It is when you become aware of the troubled sense that your life should be different and you eventually come face-to-face with the fact that life, time and possibly health are slipping through your fingers. It is when you are unable to block the aloneness that lingers underneath when you look in the mirror with regret wondering where your life went. Awakening starts when you ask yourself the simple but challenging question, how do I feel?.

If you knew that you where driving your car in the wrong way or direction would you change it? What if it was moving towards a cliff? What if people that you cared about were in the car? What would it take to alter your direction? Just like physically being awaken by your alarm, moving from the numbzone takes a shift or emotional bump to shake you to a feeling. To start the change in direction, you have to ask yourself the question, how do you feel, are you happy or sad? It is at that moment that you can clearly get an answer back, it is also at that moment that you can say, it is my time to change!!

4. This crazy thing called hurt

2010-05-25T22:13:00.000-07:00

“Hurt” in this context, is an episode of childhood pain (physical and or emotional) significant enough to evoke your protective survival reflex. The reflex role is to protect the person from any repeat of the original hurt. The reflex is crude and has actions limited to shielding or moving away to prevent any future similar hurts. For a hurtful experience to alter your future behavior in a self protective way enough to detrimentally affect you, it had to be traumatic enough to feel any variation of rejected, abandoned, scared, powerless, out of control, alone, confused, sad, unwanted, unloved or unaccepted. These types of significant hurts that trigger a survival reflex are called factory or core hurts. A core hurt always as you can imagine involves a protective or survival reflex.

Core hurts represent a point in time when a child suffers without the proper love or understanding needed to process it. In other words, no one was there to “kiss the boo-boo or kiss it all better.” Ask yourself: if every time after experiencing a hurt, you also had received love and were told that everything would be okay; would the hurt have hurt so much? Would you have moved to an open more loving state faster?

It’s important to know that everyone experiences hurt and everyone has a core hurt. If you have lived you have been hurt and most likely the hurt was associated to someone that was supposed to love or protect you. For instance even if a child was hurt by a stranger, not only would the memory of the actual episode of hurt and the corresponding protections be there, but also the hurt of being rejected, abandoned, alone. The child would have not felt protected, safe or valued by the home and family.

From person to person you really cannot compare hurts, whatever you’re greatest hurts is, it’s your greatest hurt. You hurt is yours, and your friend’s is your friends. It is true that our individual core hurts occurred in very different ways, but how we initially react to the event is the same. No matter what may have caused these feelings of powerlessness, rejection, abandonement, aloneness, out of control, fear and unworthiness, they all resulted in a protective survival reflex being activated. They also all resulted in the childhood version of unworthy or unlovable.

We all protected from hurt using our survival reflex to; stand still, attack or run away and hide. If left unresolved these protective reflexes become compounded with additional walls, fears and triggers. They can steal away time, freedom, creativity opportunities, health and our capacity to trust, experience optimal joy and to love. The first step is always the awakening that you are not your hurt, that you are not your mind and that the hurt and the corresponding survival reflex that leads your life is a reflex that can be changed.

5. Paying Yourself First

2010-01-29T11:10:00.000-08:00

Hi Dr. Martin, - I have come across some really cool things today that others have said to me. I really feel the need to pass it on to you this evening, well early morning. My life today has changed because of you. I don’t really feel any change in me but others have seen and felt it. This is a milestone in my life, thanks to God. I am amazed that one of my girl friends whom I’ve not seen in six months said to me this evening that I am “so beautiful” and that she has not seen me look so good. I would not categorize myself as beautiful, but something has changed …… as I just wasn’t who I was before, the person that complained and looked unhappy all the time. Well, just that’s not me anymore cause now I just embrace life, listen and accept. It has served me well. I am a different person in her eyes ……. wow. I really just feel more peaceful. I had a great evening connecting with people. That’s #1 of my Pay Myself First Lists that I just created with another girlfriend ……. A task that is a simple list of what brings joy into our life; I had no idea of what that may look like when it was mentioned a few days ago with her and it has ended up being something much more for me and will evolve over the next couple of weeks. It’s amazing to me that the first thing on my list was about connecting, that brings joy? I somehow felt the need to put together this List as I really don’t know what brings me happiness, never really thought of it. I’m inadvertently helping a friend, but really I’m doing it for myself, it’s all about sharing and communicating. I can do it with my husband Rick, but he’s a guy and it’s different, he doesn’t get the conversation, and he doesn’t have to, we together do it anyway without a lengthy talk and I really want / need to connect with others cause there is just more than Rick out there. It’s all about being purposeful…..Ultimately bringing happiness into ones life…….Thanks for helping me through this journey …Y.

2.2 Faith is an action

2009-12-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

Faith is the action of believing something more real than your mind
– Dr. Brian Martin

Faith in this context has nothing to do with religion. Faith, power, acceptance, deserving are all the same thing. Everyone has been born with the ability to have and use the power of free will and faith. In the purest form faith means believing in something that has not been proven to your mind or believing in something more real than what your mind thinks. For instance you don't really need faith to believe 1 + 1 equals 2, but you may need faith to believe that one person added to another person can equal more than two.

Many of us walk around with this sense or thinking that we are not lovable, valuable or deserving. We feel stuck trapped, powerless, and numb with the sensation that something is wrong with us or we are broken in some way. First things first………YOU ARE NOT BROKEN!! You have not been created to suffer and you are not alone. Those sensations are actually part of your minds protective programs and survival reflex we all learn in childhood, which we forget to update when we are adults. Those sensations are actually signals from deep inside our hearts that “something needs to happen”, the mind incorrectly interprets them as “something is missing”, and they really mean it’s time to move. Your cocoon of survival sleep is over, it’s time to wake and start your life, and it’s time to use your greatest gift of life, your free will. You are ready to thrive. That uneasiness or conflict you feel is between the force inside of you pushing you to awaken and your mind trying to stay protected and the same. Your heart wants to move and your minds want you to stay the same. Don’t worry that your mind temporarily still thinks those non-deserving things; even though it is powerful remember it is only a computer recycling the same information (I must protect and prevent any hurt) over and over. Try not to take your mind too seriously; after all it still thinks you are a powerless child that will die if it gets hurt…..what does it really know? Your mind still does not know yet that you even have free will, that is until you show and teach it. Just in case you were not sure……you are not that powerless child anymore and you are not your mind’s hurt either. You are now different than you were as a hurt child; you are an adult that can choose to create happiness, you can now ask for love if you get hurt, you can clean old hurts, all out of the power of your free will. You are now a person with the capacity to choose, you are now a person with an open slate of possible identities, you can even mix and match them, you can even change them regularly if you don’t like them. This is your life, it belongs to you, this is how much power you have, to begin you must awake and choose to accept it. If you can do this, you have done your first action of faith. Say I have free will and with my free will I choose to be happy.

One day my twelve year old daughter came up to me frustrated and crying, she said Daddy I don’t know what’s happening, I think I am losing my mind. I said Aleah you are not losing your mind, tell me what’s going on. She said, well I am thinking all of these things and I am feeling all of these things, and its making me crazy. I said Aleah, everyone has two parts to help them through life, you have a powerful mind that acts very much like a computer, it thinks and collects information and tries to protect you and help you survive. You also have a part of you that feels, that’s your heart, it is the part where new ideas come from; it is the part that is closest to a playful child and it is the one that connects you to all of the energy around you including love. When you where younger they never talked at the same time, if you ever got in trouble your mind would immediately shut you down to protect you. Now that you are older they are both talking at the same time and they are both saying different things. When this happens, it creates a lot of conflict and confusion. What’s happening is that they are waiting for you to pick which one to follow. You are now becoming conscious. Aleah they both work for you, but without you to guide them, they will both fight in their own way taking you and your body for the ride. My daughter said, that’s it…..all I have to do is pick which one I want to listen to? Yes…it is that simple. Within seconds she had picked, her crying was replaced with a smile and her frustration replaced with peace. This was her first act of free will; this was her first action of faith.

Life is a buffet, and faith is your spoon

That word “faith” can mean many different things, in this context faith means the power to create peace in times of uncertainly and despair. It is this faith that has the power to transform fear in to excitement, doubt into curiosity and conflict into peace. Faith gives you the power and freedom to move you past you safe comfort zones, to overcome any obstacle, clean any hurt and obtain all the peace, joy and love that you can. Life is a buffet and faith is your spoon. Faith is something that exists and can be used only in the present moment. With faith you can love as much as you can before you die, you can live to love and love to live. Faith is a thriving action involving feeling and a choice unlike the survival reflex which only uses thinking and reacting. In total, faith involves; awareness, feeling, and your unique power to choose. It is not something you just have by reading a book, understanding faith and actually using it are two different things. To have faith you must use it.

Playful Faith

In times of conflict, faith guides us to the most efficient and fun way to connect to the force, energy and rhythm that is within us and connects all of us. In this context the term “Playful Faith” helps describe what faith is really used for. If you choose the most amount of “joy”, “peace”, “love” “gratitude” in every situation it would be through the action of faith. Faith is an intentional action; it is the action of choosing your hearts fun more than your minds fear, even when your mind has some really good arguments. It is basically the action of you seeing and choosing your heart’s direction. Faith uses the power of free will and choice to play through painful situations even those that are triggered by old hurts. Faith is knowing that LOVE is the strongest force, even in the presence of fear. Faith is the action that brings you closer to love, peace, joy, even when you feel lost, powerless, out of control, conflicted, full of shame, guilt or fear and every fiber of you wants to run. In fact, in a decision between love and hate or love and fear, it would be the action of faith that would give you the fastest route back to peace. Bottom line faith is the action of choosing your heart over your mind.

When to use the power of faith

In this context active or playful faith as I like to call it, is not needed in peacetime or when you are in a state of gratitude, remember in gratitude you are already connected to love and peace. The ability to be grateful however in times of conflict and stress is definitely guided by the action of faith. Faith is only used or needed in times of conflict, faith is not really needed to stay the same or suffer. For example you don't need faith to stay conflicted, stuck, sick or depressed. You do not need faith to be the best “miserable” person or to become unhappy. Faith is reserved for those actions that align or increase your; ability to feel (awareness), healing, gratitude, peace and happiness. In fact in life it is impossible to be happy, peaceful or experience deep love through life unless you have faith. Faith allows you to see the present moment as safe, the future as good, and the unknown as exciting. With faith you feel confident and powerful. Faith allows you to feel grounded even when you have thoughts of being out of control.

Faith is a Friend

Faith is just like having a true friend; true friends celebrate you in the wonderful times and also shine to guide you through times of conflict. Do you call upon your friend faith even in the times when you feel all alone, conflicted, sad, helpless and out of control or do you suffer alone? Well you should, because that is what faith is the best at? Your action of free will to call upon your friend faith to help you also starts to reprogram or teach your mind how to be peaceful. The action of faith teaches your mind that the unknown is not always scary. Faith eventually tells your mind that even if you don’t understand something you can still move. Once you start to use faith, you will start to feel the inner peace even “assumed” worst of times, you become more awakened, more aware and more likely to have new levels of faith. Consistent use of faith becomes simpler even though the obstacles appear on the outside to be more difficult. Having faith sets in motions the opportunity to have different degree of being more and more open. With each new opportunity for faith comes even greater awareness, openness, love and connection. These are also known as “jumping points” or “leaps of faith”. These “Leaps of faith” or jumping points are opportunities. These however if you are still stuck, numb or the unaware are also known as; confusion, conflict, anxiety and even depression.

Purpose of Faith – Faith guides you, protects you and cleans hurt

There is no shortage of love or faith; and there is more than enough love and faith available to clean any hurt, accomplish any goal or create any life you want. Using faith is designed to build self esteem, peace, create joy and clean past hurts change unlovable and numb to lovable and alive. With faith you are not focused on the problems or the many hurts. With faith you are not focused on always “stopping hurt” or “letting go”. Faith is the action of choosing or “letting in” the most love, peace, light, happiness, joy, playful, fun, openness, god, in any given difficult situation. The action of faith and “letting in” love is efficient, automatically “letting go” as it cleans and heals. Through faith you light areas that used to seem scary and dark. Initially your own hurts give you plenty of opportunities to have faith. Once used, faith immediately uncovers new peace, inner power and possibilities, allowing you to move to the next moment with increased awareness and self-esteem. With every unknown or powerless sensation comes the opportunity to have faith and with every application of faith arises more self-esteem, confidence and peace. You start to recognize the pattern, its Fear, Faith, and then Fun. So, it’s always open, then conflict, then more faith, then more peace. Just like a step, until you’re finally clean. Clean means as if you’ve never been hurt. The more your survival reflex wants to distract, shut down or run away the more your faith is needed. You start to increase your faith muscle, you become stronger and faster. You may even start to seek out your fears, using them as a opportunities with use and increase your peace, gratitude and faith. Through the action and application of faith you become a love seeker.

Results of the action of faith.

Trusting you’ll be ok even when your mind says the opposite
Surrendering to “what is” as opposed to “why it is
A sense of peace even if hurt still exists in the world
Sense of being connected and not alone
An Increase in self esteem
Increase of awareness
The increasing ability to see the love, joy, peace, opportunity in every situation

Triggers are opportunities for Growth

Your mind’s survival reflex is not going to let you consciously remember every one of your childhood hurts and traumas. In fact because pain is painful, unless triggered a past hurt and the corresponding protective mechanisms (closed, non trusting, afraid of the unknown) will continue to exist. The downside of waiting for time and suffering to push you into an awakening, or the longer the childhood hurt is left unresolved or unloved the more elaborate the walls fears and protections. The action of faith brings your hurt to you; the action of faith allows you move beyond your hurt and kiss-your own boo-boos.

Building the Faith Muscle

In the emotionally awakened person (someone who has started to feel) past hurts are often triggered up to the present moment. These “triggers” when combined with faith can actually assist movement and change. These are personalized faith building exercises. I mean, you really would have to have faith to see the most amount of peace and love when you are stressed, lost and sad…..right? These events can be triggered by a situation, triggered by a person, class, lecture, or they are “open ends” which are opportunities to create your goals. If you have written some goals or have asked the universe for something expect these “triggers”, “open ends” opportunities to come up more often. This is especially true if any of your previous hurt is getting in the way of your future happiness. These prepare and groom you for the new you. In other words be careful or be ready for what you ask for because you going to get it. Faith is the action that redirects and reprograms the minds perception; faith shows the mind that; vulnerability is not the same as weakness but rather strength, our openness is a better protection than our closed walls, our fears as opportunities for growth. Repetitive use of faith has the added benefit of retraining or reprogramming the survival reflex into a thriving reflex. Making choices from faith also known as following your heart allows even your own mind to witness the outcome. Your own mind does what a mind does best, it gathers proof. Eventually even your own mind learns that faith beats fear and that the only way through fear is faith. The mind will never understand the force that leads or guides faith, it may never be able to comprehend the unknown, but it does learn to trust the action that you do called faith. Like a good computer gathering data, the mind learns that having faith allows its survival when it is trapped in the unknown and freaking out trying to find the answer that it now has a friend in faith. You mind has become friends with your heart. At this stage your mind even starts to help you, so instead of your mind conflicting with the heart they now share a common way to remind you to have faith. Having faith becomes your new protection. Faith directs us to be purposeful, peaceful and grateful.

In the spiritual sense faith is the act of using your free will to move towards god. The ability to have faith is a human gift, it’s something you use while you’re alive, and it’s not something you would use once you are dead? It is one thing to have faith; it is another thing to use it when you need it the most. Anyone can have faith when everything is going well; it’s the action of faith when your mind thinks you are in trouble that gives faith the power to move anyone at anytime from surviving to thriving. Your greatest challenge is not going to be finding faith, it is contained in everyone. Your greatest challenge will be more around the acceptance that you are in fact that loved and given such an amazing power. The power of faith, allows every soul a uniquely human and spiritual work of art. It has the power to create childlike adults with playful expression and unpredictable purpose and joy. Even though every one of us has the power to have faith, you still have to accept it and use it, which in itself is your first action of faith. Faith has to be used, it cannot be on a shelf, it has to be claimed and aimed. Conflict in the mind creates conflict in the body, which manifests as more suffering, disease and lost time and potential. We all have built into us a reflex to survive but we also have the choice through faith to thrive. Faith is here to help you. Faith does not abandon you, you have to abandon faith. Faith is a true friend, are you a true friend to faith?

With faith you can change

Surviving into Thriving
Feeling out of control into to Freedom
Past Hurt Reflex into Current Love Reflex
Avoiding pain into Seeking love
Constant Conflict into Consistent Peace
Protective and Closed into Open and Adventurous
Fear into Excitement
Doubt into Curiosity
Mind and Heart conflicted into the Mind helping the Heart
Powerless into Choice
Numbness into alive

Conclusion

We are free to be powerful in this life when we are alive. When we die, the earthly version of you is gone along with your ability to choose in this life. The ability to have choice is what makes up the power to have faith. Faith is choice put into action, and not just any action it’s an action that leads you directly to see the joy, happiness, love, peace, childlike, god in every situation. Even though we all have free will, why would we ever use it to move away from something good? If you have free will why would you use your free will to move away from the light, love, peace or joy? Faith is not needed to feel alone, stuck, resistance, fearful. Even after we are awakened and aware we can still operate from our childhood survival reflex, we can still be triggered and distract, run and push away. As amazing as the survival reflex is to protect us and help us to survive our childhood, it fails quite miserably when we are adults trying to live without the action of faith.

1. How did the words God, Love and Faith become bad?

2009-12-28T18:26:00.001-08:00

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion - Abraham Lincoln

I commonly ask patients are you religious or are you spiritual? Do you believe in something? What words do you use to describe what you believe? Do you use the word God? I commonly see patients that have a huge aversion to the word “God”. Even the words “FAITH” and “LOVE” are purposely avoided. How did we and our own minds come to believe that three of the most powerful and originally beautiful words are bad?

The word God unfortunately has been associated to religion, and many religions now have unfortunately been associated to corruption, guilt, shame, mistrust, unworthiness. There are many different variations of religion, many different variations of Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, etc, and many different variations of spiritual leaders. I do not really believe that one particular religion or philosophy is better than another, what makes something positive or negative has more to do with the awareness of each individual. Also the way each person consciously or subconsciously interprets it. In other words, the philosophy of a religion can be misunderstood if the person’s perception and reality. Do they see through the eyes of fear or through love? For instance using the bible as an example, how many different times has that single book been used to manipulate fear or inspire love? If asked to sum up the bible in one word, would you say that it is more a book of “love” or is it a book on “hate”? It is these misinterpretations that ultimately cause the message, action and real meaning of “Love” and “God” to be taken away from what was intended.

Throughout time there is a genuine desire to believe in something. No matter when or where we look, we do see the consistent wanting or desire of people to want to believe in a good power or God. We want to believe in a positive force, in loving energy or power that we are part of and connected to. That desire to be connected to a good god is stronger than ever, we want to believe in a force that is not necessarily above us or below but inside of us. It is this inside force that needs attention, this is called our feelings and it is using these feelings as a guide that makes someone spiritual. In the past people where born into their religion, if your family was catholic you where catholic, very few people actually sat down as an adult and decided what set of values and moral they wanted. Instead those were taught to them. Many religions satisfied parts of what we want but we were fed other pieces that did not fit, unfortunately when you are not using your feelings to guide you, the truth can get mixed in with the un-truth and be still served up together.

One example of forgetting to use feeling with trained thinking is when I have asked several religious patients, “If you had to go against your religion to follow God would you? It’s a tricky question, it is amazing how many times people say, “no I would follow my religion”. Let me get this straight, if you had a voice inside of you (called feelings) that you knew was connected to that force that created us or God, you would still follow your religion? Shouldn’t your religion be aligned with your feelings? Those that chose to be religious can be spiritual as well; no teaching should be more real than your own feeling. You can be both.

We know throughout time many people have killed in the name of GOD, I am pretty sure that it was not Gods intent to kill, even when death is mentioned in the books like the bible. If you are not sure, say this to yourself…..GOD gave life to kill it……does that feel right? Now try this, GOD gave life to live it, how does that feel? It’s important to have the freedom to feel and the freedom to choose from that information. Whatever force created us, has given us this life as a gift and with that life the freedom to choose. Misinterpretations of some religions have made God less loving and more fearful.

There was a time in my life that if I saw anything with the word God or Love in it, I would immediately throw it down and walk away. The words God and Love became untrusting dirty words to me. GOD meant guilt and LOVE meant hurt, and of course Faith meant just reading a book over and over, it did not have any action to it. I like so many people purposely avoided the words and if needed made up new more safe and pleasant words. God become mother earth, faith became trust, and love became a word without any deep meaning. I realized that I was avoiding these word because they were associated to religion, guilt and distrust, they were also associated to my childhood, my parents, my upbringing my hurt. I asked myself why such powerful words should not be used purposefully. Just because someone in my past affected the meaning of these words, does not mean that I should let their “crap”, their hurt, their numbness affect me. This unfortunately keeps us locked into a set of values that we have learned solely due to the fact those beliefs, values and morals are connected and attached to our childhood and our survival reflex. Those values called “starter values” or “survival values” create our base identity and are strongly attached to our parents and our first sense of safety or home, even if the home was not that safe. This survival attachment is so strong in fact that any challenge or attempt to change or upgrade them can actually feel like you are going to die, or lose your whole identity (see moving past the comfort zone). We all have values, principal, guidelines, judgments and morals that we adopt that do not always create, health, peace and joy in our life, and those are the ones that we did not have any input to create. Believing or not questioning anything beyond what we have been programmed to believe through our childhood creates massive amounts of stress, conflict and resistance. This resistance overtime can lead to physical and emotional disruptions and disease. This can be difficult to break through without suffering, and even though you can never underestimate the power of suffering to move someone to change, do you always have to move and change by suffering? It is important to know that this is your life and your gift, and realize that some or all of those survival values may not even be yours. It may be time to upgrade them using your feelings.

What is faith, love and what is God? It’s time to reconnect those words to a more playful meaning. In this context, if I use the word God, I mean anything that did exist, that will exist, that connects you to me and us to everything. In this context “faith” is the action that brings you closer to “god”, and love is what you feel when you are connected.

Related to the words GOD, FAITH and LOVE, I like using them now, their meaning is all mine, they are not tainted by someone else’s hurt. I have been able to use my free will to create the meaning and values that I wanted to have, most of them closely mimic how an open and playful child would act, see and use these words. To do this is a process called awareness, this is also known as “feeling” and it’s the ability to “feel your feelings” which allows you to know what is truth for you. When we are operating primarily within our survival reflex, we are numb to our own feelings, our own inner guidance, and our own connection to whatever version of God YOU want to believe in.

I can’t prove that god does exists also I cannot prove the opposite. The simplest message and the first truth that I learned is this, if you do something that makes you feel good, you're close to God or whatever version of God. If you do something that makes you feel bad, you're not. It does not really matter what form of religion or spirituality you believe in, as long as it is your choice to believe it and it brings you closer to peace and joy. It is common to unknowingly adopt beliefs and values through what you learned as a child. So check in with yourself, use your feelings, all values are not valuable. If you find yourself unhappy, full of anger, stuck or numb, entertain the possibility that you’re current belief system and values may need to be upgraded, altered or even overhauled. A belief system that is based on what is true and followed in a truthful way automatically creates a feeling of peace and happiness. This is of course, unless you believe that you are doing everything right and truthful and that’s why you are feeling bad, conflicted, stressed, physically exhausted or numb? Entertain the possibility that any value, moral, principal, guideline or obligation that causes you to be consistently un-peaceful, unhappy, or in disharmony may not be yours and may not be the ones you want to have. How can you really be free if you not even following your own rules. Remember life has some suffering, but you have not been given this great gift of life, and the power of free will to have a life full of suffering. It maybe now time to think and feel in a different way, even in a total opposite way. Ask yourself, is it you time for your awakening, are you ready?

2.3 The Patients Ah-ha Moments - What I have Learned

2009-12-23T19:34:00.000-08:00

Julie - 75 Year Grandmother - Moving past the "comfort zone"

It's clear to me now, that all that I do is really for me, this is a huge switch from thinking I have to take care of others...its okay to speak out to make myself heard even if that means fighting to Love.

I really understand that Love is always worth fighting for. I see now in my marriage that I have not trusted my husband. I have without knowing conditioning my husband to believe that I was unreachable, that is how protected myself, I distanced myself rather than risk getting hurt /rejected.

I know that its time to move, its time to reach out and I am scared of failing, I am scared of giving up as I have done many times with the excuse that he does't hear me (physically) and he is too preoccupied to listen.

I will now stretch beyond my past conditioning and behavior and use faith to go beyond what my mind would tell me. God Bless me I need help and trust here to do and go where I have not ventured before. Thank you Dr. Martin for today, I am so Grateful, In Loving and Light

55 year old single mother

I learned that I am doing a "box step" around the leap of faith, probably because my life has not been so bad that there is no place to go but up. I have become accustomed to suffering and am afraid of being vulnerable. What there is to do is to be open – take a leap of faith – be vulnerable – experience more love. My mission is to become a love seeker as opposed to a pain avoider.

I learned how fear based my life has been, how confined and restricted I have been. One ray of light here is that as I write this, it feel good that I am not being judgmental, I am just seeing it for what it is.

It feels like I have been shaken to the core (I was actually physically shaking as I left the office shaking inside and outside) and I still have some of that right now hours later. It was devastating to me to realize that even my meditation practice was unconnected / disconnected from God. I feel lost and right at the beginning....a beginning I trust....to start from ground zero. I learned that what I lack most is faith, and that faith is action that makes me believe something beyond what my mind would tell me. I also learned, that if I can be happy....and express happiness...it will permeate everything that I do and those that I encounter.

Thank you for staying with me and not pulling any punches doc.

2.1 Awakenings - Your Doorways to Change

2009-12-21T21:43:00.000-08:00

Tme is a great motivator to wake up

We all die in time. The thing about this life is once you start living, you become connected to time, which as we all know moves in only one direction, forward. Time is going by whether you like it or not, whether you’re happy or not. There’s really only one thing you have control over and that’s how much life, fun, joy, purpose will you pack in this time. There is an ocean of time and possibilities, so learning to swim or surf is not only life saving and keeps you from drowning but it is simply more fun. Do you really believe that you have been given this great gift of life to suffer? You are not broken, you can snap out of it, or you can snap into it, but its your life and it now your time to move, wake up to your life, it’s okay….ready.....set.....awake.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” - Carl Jung.

"The truth mayset you free, but first it will piss you off". Amelia aheart

Your Awakening

Why is it that instead of seeing a happy person excited to start a new day smiling back at you every morning, you avoid making eye contact with the less than happy face reflected in the bathroom mirror? You know that something has to change. This is the process called awakening. Simply stated awakenings are times or pivotal points of increased clarity, wisdom and awareness. They are times that you see yourself like never before. They are a point in someone’s life when enough time and suffering has passed to motivate change. They are a slap across the souls face, a spank on the soul’s newborn bottom saying, it’s time to wake up, the coast is clear, it’s safe, it’s time to move, groove and celebrate. It indicates an opportunity and need in a person’s life for movement, change and action. It’s a jumping point where positive growth and change are the most possible and likely. Its signals new beginnings, a new perception about ones position in life. It is exactly the time where things and the way you see yourself and the world around you will never be the same. It is that time where your soul awakens to its new surroundings and potential.

A person can experience many awakenings in their life, each one has potential to “let love in” thereby freeing or cleaning past hurt or traumas. Whether they are used efficiently depends on the ability to see them as opportunities or doorways for growth and efficiently act, decide or move into these doors.

These awakenings present as a sudden burst or in louder and louder waves. Once triggered they can seem to take you over. Awakenings are felt deep inside and are triggered by outside events, people, place, funerals, and especially calendars and mirrors. In the beginning awakenings are more painful for they bring into light the time lost and merge past hurt and experiences with the now so real present. They shine the truth into the protected past. They can be times of deep regret. They allow you to see lost potential, hidden regret and remorse. They can start with the statement “where has my life gone”, “this is not how I thought my life would be”. For instance the person who has worked their whole life to be responsible and at age fifty realizes that maybe life was not just about being responsible, another person that succeeded in everything that he was taught and thought to be valuable, job, house, money but never trusted or really loved someone. The mother who took care of everyone else except herself until her physical body gave out and created a cancer. It’s the classic case of Mr. Scrooge, or Jimmy Stewart in It’s a wonderful life”. It is the beginning is something new. Every awakening is personal and its timing is decided by how your life has been moving and your ability to accept, evolve or adjust your life. It is a time that pushes you to the potential of new actions and choice. It is a time that is yours to create a new way of being, a new personalized reflex. The more distant your path from the one that creates happiness the more likely you will feel one. In a spiritual sense, an awakening is GOD (by god I mean the force that we are all part of and connected to) pushing you to make your first action and accept your gift of life. Just as much as the nurturing soil may push the seed to the sun to grow.

At the beginning these doors themselves are can seem uncomfortable to feel, see and open, however the more a person delays, avoids, distracts the more energy required and the more uncomfortable they are. The least amount of effort is by moving through choice. The faster you choice the less suffering you go through. It is also becomes progressively more uncomfortable to see and open the next door. Still most of us are aware at some level of these painful points but not aware enough to know what they mean and what to do. They go by many names, lows, funks, anxiety, fear, breakdowns, depression. For most of us the thought of pain is so painful, that any sign of discomfort leads to the avoidance and distraction reflex. Without guidance, these pivotal points of growth are quickly protected, dismissed, resisted, blocked and purposely avoided with new intricate, diverse and complicated levels of distractions effectively numbing the person (numbzone) that is until enough time, life, potential, purpose and health have been lost to motivate the next awakening point.

Even by reading this blog/book you may be starting to experience an awakening, you may have more awareness and see some tools for change. Life gives only opportunities to become even more alive. If you decide to reject, ignore, distract, numb or protect from these opportunities, then life and the universe or now GOD does not give up or abandon you, it just means it will knock even louder, which means more pain and suffering. In fact the further that you move away from the truth, the more time energy and resources it takes to awaken. The deeper the sleep the louder the scream or bump. What’s great about awakenings is that they are sustainable. The more awake you are, the less likely you can ever go back to sleep and wisdom is not something that you can forget, like knowledge. For example if someone was to show you what ‘light’ looks like it’s not like you can say to yourself, there is only dark, you can’t go backwards – it’s even more painful. Awakening gives you wisdom that gives way to more awareness and awareness gives opportunity to even more awakenings, you get the picture….its infinite, it’s a buffet of opportunities, possibilities and joy, all with more power and choice. The more power and choice you have the more in control you really are. So, now that your awakened a bit, you have to learn how to feel.

5. Doc's Three Agreements

2009-12-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

"Watch your thoughts because they become your words.

Watch your words because they become your actions.

Watch your actions because they become your habits.

Watch your habits because they become your character.

Watch your character because it becomes your destiny.”

Freeman Hrabowski II

The way you think effects the way you feel and heal.

This is now proven scientific fact. We now have biochemical, physiological, and empirical evidence to support this, so when a patient comes to me and says, ‘Brian, do you really think that you can actually help someone live longer? Or better? Or do you really believe that you can change the way a person thinks and feels?’ I tell them, ‘Of course you can!’ It’s not a belief anymore; belief is reserved for religion and when you are not sure. In my clinical practice I have proved this true over and over again. The power inside you to feel good is amazing. Most people never ever use their power to feel good because they are too busy out of reflex trying to avoid feeling bad. Avoiding bad has nothing to do with feeling good. Feeling good means doing the actions that attract and make you feel good, hence making you not feel bad! These are the only really two actions that you have in every situation in every moment in your life: you can either act out of reflex to avoiding something bad (avoiding conflict, rejection, hurt) or you can act out of choice and do something to feel or attract good.

As an awareness exercise, as many times as possible throughout the day ask yourself: Am I doing this action right now to avoid feeling bad? Or am I doing this action because it makes me feel good?’ I’ll give you an example: My wife was considering visiting her parents. However, my wife at that time in her life did not get along with her parents. She felt guilty and obligated to see them because it was around Christmas time. I asked her, ‘Honey, are you going to see your parents because you really really want to and because you’re going to have a great time with them? Or are you going to see them because you don’t want to feel guilty for not seeing them? If the latter is what you are doing then that’s not the reason to see somebody. I don’t want you to come home to me because you feel guilty that you shouldn’t. I’d rather know that you come home to me because you love being here. That’s the difference.’ In this situation she choose not to go and even though she was a sad for a moment she still had more peace and power around it than the conflict and stress of trying to decide and make everyone happy.

Our reactions and our actions to our environment create stress or create happiness. Our bodies will respond to this. People will come to see me and say, ‘If you can just get my body feeling better, then I’ll be happy.’ My response to that is, ‘no we have to do both, you cannot take your head off your body and just treat your body, when we treat both the physical and the emotional as you become happier your body respond even faster.

We now know that only 20-30 percent of our health has to do with genetic, that menas you have up to 80% power over your health, over your life, and over your happiness. You have the power to enjoy a longer health span, to live a longer life, and the best time to make a positive lifestyle change is now. No one is here to take a persons right to suffer away from them, but ask yourself do you really need more suffering to move and change, what would it take to make the "now" a little bit closer. How much time, health, happiness and peace does anyone really need to lose?

Doc Martins actions - If you remember these three things then you are well on your way to healthy change:

Follow your heart – Learn the difference between the part that you think with and the part you feel with, to start ask yourself if you are avoiding pain, or seeking love? The opposite rule also works, in a conflict the opposite of your mind at the beginning will be your heart. The B.I.T. Tool is also useful at his stage
Life is a gift, yours – you are not broken, you have not been given this amazing gift of life to suffer. Every part of you has been created to help you. Start a graditude journal and list everyday what your are grateful for, this will focus your mind on how to help your heart.
Pay yourself first - Create a list and vision board of what creates happiness or joy for you, start using and trusting your feelings again, they are a powerful tool especially when combined with the mind. Imagination combined with action creates real miracles.

2.2 Awakening your feeling

2009-12-14T21:42:00.000-08:00

The first question I ask each patient is how happy are they on a scale of zero to ten – ten being the happiest. To clarify “being happy” is not the same as not feeling sad, it’s not the same as coping or surviving life. Your first task, ask yourself how happy are you? Then write that number down. Next I ask the question again, except this time I create a visual of what "happy" is, most people at the start are stuck, trapped or even numb and do not really know or have never seen what "happiness", "peace" or "love" is. I ask them to imagine a small child young enough to not be hurt playing in a park, a child around 5-6 years old. Do you know anyone that is happier than a playful child who has never been hurt? If the patient cannot remember their childhood (which is usually the case with trauma), think of a small child in a playground on the edge of a slide, a child playing in the park with little sparkling angel eyes. A child essence, innocence and inherent wisdom is what makes them sparkle. They play "playfully" in the playground without any effort. Playing and laughing is a child’s natural state. Before a child gets expose to any hurt, they do not choose to cover up pain, they’re totally vulnerable, totally open, they’re happy. They’re not thinking about something in the past or the future. They’re not thinking about who hurt them. They are not thinking about being judged for laughing or crying to loud. Their smile is not affected; they are not involved in the deep problems of the world. They are not protecting themselves – because they’ve never been hurt. The child is not thinking about a fear that leads to hurt, to a clean child "fear" is not even experienced as adult fear, and it is quite the opposite. Just like a little bird jumping out of a nest for the first time, or in this case like a small child just about to go down a slide for the first time. The fear is exciting – it says pay attention, things are happening. So before a child gets hurt and protected this "fearful unknown" is actually the "exciting unknown", fear is excitement. The child also communicates and exudes a form of simplicity, clarity or innate wisdom about life. The child is said to have innocence. There’s an inherent wisdom in children, they have not been talked out of their wisdom. That is until enough hurt or trauma activates their survival protections to take over. A clean child, has not been trained to lie, expressing the truth freely and openly, this childhood truth is what we call the wisdom of a child. What would you rather have – wisdom or knowledge? Which one more?

So, now are you able to see and feel that child? I then ask again, how happy they are on a scale of 1-10, except this time we are comparing you to that clean child, with 10 being now the happiest child. In other words, how happy are they compared to a child that has never been hurt? The answers are quite different, what qualities and characteristics of that "clean" child have you lost? How many protections have you picked up, how much trust have you lost. Most of us when we are asked that question for the first time receive the answer from a part of us that evaluates hurt, called the mind. Hence the reflex of the mind does not really know what happy is, to the mind happy is "safe". So the first response to the question of, how happy are you on a scale of one to 10 when happiness has not been defined, is not even about happy, the first answer is more how "not miserable you are". With the help of the small child, this allows a reference point, most of us would agree that there are not too many better examples of what love, happiness looks like than a playful and open child that has never been hurt. Go through the qualities and characteristics of that playful and open small unhurt, unprotected, or "clean child"; the innocence, the excitement, the non-judgment, the ability to be in the present moment, the creativity, freedom, truth and simple wisdom that they have, the sparkling eyes, and the trust, the lack of fear.

To start, go to the mirror, and ask yourself and the child in you, how happy are you? If the answer does not come back with a warm, peaceful and sparkly eyed response, then ask it, what do you need to hear to be happy? That will start the awakening to your new self.

Qualities of a child

Open
Playful
Happy
Adventurous
Excited by life
Easy to forget and forgive
ager to love
Non-judgment
In the moment
Innate wisdom, connection to truth, they have an innocence
Open without protection, no walls
Sparkly eyes, loving
Fear without being afraid,
The fear and unknown is exciting
No guilt, no judgment
Natural state is happy
Present, in the now, happy in the moment, focused on the action or event in front of them.
Trusting - Ability to see good
Not worried about being judged
Not focused in the past or future or unknown
Self-full, self absorbed, creative
Okay making mistakes, without know they have done anything wrong
Integrity, show what they feel without delay
Peaceful

Awakenings cause you to "feel your feelings" again, which then leads to increased awareness. From this awareness you start to have power over your past hurts, fears, protections and conditioning. It is the consecutive rhythm of awakening, awareness, and your abilty to use free will that creates your sustained levels of peace, health and happiness no matter what the outside environment.

1.0 The Head is connected to the Body

2009-12-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

In my 15 years of practice I have had thousands of one to one patient visits, of those visits 90% percent have been with females between the ages of 35-55 years old. Two of the greatest things about seeing so many females are that they teach you how to feel and they ask questions. Both qualities are essential for uncovering happiness.

In the beginning most of my practice was centered on treating disease and dysfunction by improving a person’s overall physical health, using nutrition, diet, exercise, lifestyle, detoxification, repairing deficiencies and balancing and replacing hormone levels. This was a sound approach that worked very well except for one main thing, I found that over and over, the way a person thinks effected how a person feels and heals. I started noticing a pattern, I would help the patient with their grouping of symptoms or diagnosed diseases, we would lower and in many cases totally remove their medications, then send them off healthier and more informed only to see them back. Some I would see in as short as a couple months others a couple years later with the original condition or another manifestation of the same thing. This was great for return business but it was not great for my peace. It was like as soon as they regained their health back they slowly started to sabotage themselves until their suffering or severity of the disease was enough to cause them to change again. They had to be desperate every time to change; in fact no matter what the final outcome if they were not desperate enough or had not suffered enough they could not be motivated to change long enough to have an effect. For instance a heart attack is a great motivator to start taking care of yourself, but too often it was the second one that cemented the change, that is if they lived.

I started to ask patients about this “cycle” in their history and found out that this “suffering to change sabotage cycle” or "suffering box step" (suffering, then life change, then health, then sabotage, then back to suffering) was present in almost every chronic patient. It was of course not their conscious choice, no one says, “when I grow up I want to be sick”, or “I just love suffering”, or “I want to lose life, time, health and happiness before I appreciate it. Why do so many of us we have to always learn by loosing something we love? I guess it works; it’s just a very long and painfully scenic way to do things. Life is a gift and it is too precious and purposeful to rely just on that method of change and growth. The core that tied all of these cases together was the inability to accept happiness. Consistent health is directly related to how happy a person is. Some at the beginning of their journey simply do not know how to be healthy and happy, many are unable to accept consistent health and peace, and many have a subconscious program that they don’t deserve to feel good, happy and peaceful. I found that all of us as some level have been taught or programmed from a young age that we are somehow not lovable, not valuable, not worthy, that we do not matter or we are not important. The chronic pattern of suffering and disease can draw a safe form of attention that is sadly a familiar state for many. At the same time the peaceful and healthy state are strangely more unfamiliar and unknown. In the words of the song writer George Michael -

“you look for your dreams in heaven, but what the hell are you supposed to do when they come true”.

Being “peaceful in peace” can be stressful to the emotionally unaware mind that thinks, “I am not deserving”. Too much health or happiness or even stillness, creates anxiety and fear mostly due to the perception that it could be taken away. It’s the memory of rejection that everyone of us has as a core hurt. We all at one time have been rejected by someone who was supposed to love us. This is what I have labelled "factory hurts".

Happy people tend to be less depressed (how many happy depressed people do you know?) and healthy people tend to be less sick and happy and healthy people can move and inspire the world. The answer became clear, start evoking and inspiring happiness in the person. Help the body, mind and the heart. The journey to happiness is not so much found through the mind but rather by waking up that feeling part of us all called the heart.

The you start and move by awakening feeling, feeding faith, finding love, enjoying the peace, living your awarness, being a purposeful being.